Bomb-building facility opens its doors

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Rosenberg <bob () bobrosenberg phoenix az us>
Date: June 16, 2005 1:13:46 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: AP: Bomb-building facility opens its doors


Dave

CNN is reporting about public tours of the fissile material plant in  
Oak Ridge,
TN.

Some of us on IP remember the news  --  when it was news  --  that  
something new
and different, something called an atomic bomb had been dropped on  
Japan.

Cordially,

Bob Rosenberg
P.O. Box 33023
Phoenix, AZ  85067-3023
LandLine:  (602)274-3012
Mobile:  (602)206-2856
bob () bobrosenberg phoenix az us

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PLEASE NOTE:  No trees were destroyed in the sending of this  
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Bomb-building facility opens its doors
Public gets rare look at calutrons that fueled first A-bomb
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/06/14/little.boy.fuel.ap/index.html

Tuesday, June 14, 2005 Posted: 10:39 AM EDT (1439 GMT)

OAK RIDGE, Tennessee (AP) -- The government is offering a rare  
glimpse of the
massive machines used to enrich uranium for the "Little Boy" bomb --  
the first
atomic weapon used in war, dropped 60 years ago in August on  
Hiroshima, Japan.

Inside the high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant remain the last  
of 1,152
calutrons that once filled nine buildings. The machinery was part of the
top-secret bomb-building Manhattan Project, which turned this rural  
countryside
about 30 miles west of Knoxville into a "secret city" of 75,000  
people between
1942 and 1945.

"Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world  
was going on
out here," Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said Monday. "All  
this material
was coming in, truckload after truckload, and nothing ever left."

About 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium were produced in Oak  
Ridge over a
year's time for the Little Boy bomb -- all carried in briefcases by
plainclothes couriers to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the bomb was  
partially
assembled before being moved to Tinian in the Northern Marianas  
Islands and
loaded onto the B-29 Enola Gay for the bomb run over Hiroshima on  
August 6,
1945.

Many of those questions remain in this still highly classified  
environment,
where today nuclear warhead parts are dismantled and refurbished and  
bomb-grade
uranium is stockpiled.

For the first time, the public will be allowed to see the old  
calutron machines
-- devices used for separating out fissionable uranium for reactor  
fuel or
bombs -- in tours this weekend as part of Oak Ridge's annual Secret City
Festival.

The tours quickly filled in advance with more than 600 people signing  
up.

Even many who worked here didn't know exactly what they were working  
on until
the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing more than 100,000. Japan  
surrendered
less than a month later.

"I wouldn't have known what an atomic bomb was. I had never heard of  
it," said
Gladys Owens, 80, of Harlan, Kentucky, who was among scores of young  
women
hired to control electric current in the calutrons on orders from the
engineers.

The calutrons separated fissile Uranium 235 for the bomb using huge  
magnets and
vast quantities of electricity from the government-owned Tennessee  
Valley
Authority.

Owens, who was 19 and just out of high school when she worked here  
from January
until August 1945, said she didn't piece together her place in  
history until
she attended the festival last year, saw her picture in the  
historical displays
and was given a private tour.

Her reaction?

"Mostly, I thank God the state of Tennessee is still on the map," she  
said, with
a laugh. "Because I was right here at the controls. At 19 years old."





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